


Missing Pieces

by RecoveringTheSatellites



Series: Trope-a-palooza [7]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, F/M, Fluff, Mailroom!Killian, Secret Santa, a little bit of Christmas and a lot of Happy End, and a few questions, cs secret santa 2019, lawyer!Emma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21888616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RecoveringTheSatellites/pseuds/RecoveringTheSatellites
Summary: Emma is a high-priced lawyer with some questions for her life, and Killian is the mailroom guy who's not afraid to offer an answer or two.Shameless Christmas fluff with a small dash of Existential Pondering, rolled into the recycled air and neon lighting of an office building.Otherwise known as my contribution to CS Secret Santa 2K19.
Relationships: Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan
Series: Trope-a-palooza [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1450798
Comments: 35
Kudos: 99
Collections: CSSECRETSANTA2k19





	Missing Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> This is my CS Secret Santa gift to @eastwesthomeisbest - who said her favorite Christmas movie is 'Love, Actually', and her favorite storyline in it is the Prime Minister /assistant.
> 
> Well, darling - most likely this is not exactly what you were expecting, but my muse just heard --- OH! Successful!Emma and Mailroom!Killian - let me run with that! --- and then it went off the rails. :)  
> i sincerely hope you like it anyway!  
> MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

_"Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it."  
\- Aubrey de Gray -_

The first time he sees her he says, “Excuse me?” as he knocks on her door frame, and she promptly spills her coffee. And then lets loose a string of expletives worthy of a sailor.

He pulls out some leftover napkins from lunch and hands them to her, and she actually thanks him. Thanks him and quietly laughs at herself.

“Sorry about the language.” There’s laughter in her voice, as well as strain and exhaustion. He can tell. He sees lots of people each day, many of them with the same strain and exhaustion all over their features.

None of them with laughter in their voices, though.

“I don’t mind a bit of language.” That’s probably the single dumbest thing he has ever said. Anyone has ever said.

Her eyebrow quirks up when she hears his accent, and she says, “South of England?”

He sputters. It’s thoroughly undignified. 

She laughs.

“Bournemouth,” he answers. “How on earth did you guess?”

“I have had the good fortune to be able to travel on occasion,” she answers, and smiles at him, but while genuine, neither the smile nor the friendliness in her voice are inviting. He knows she is giving him a very gentle hint that this will not be a lengthy conversation. Or any conversation. This was a brief moment of levity, and now it is over.

She holds out her hand.

He hands her the mail.

It’s odd, though.

“I can give it to your assistant in the future,” he says. “It’s just -- she wasn’t there. Or he. Do you even have an assistant yet?”

He’s babbling.

Her eyes narrow, and she looks back up at him. 

“No, that’s all right,” she says, after a short hesitation. “I don’t have an assistant, yet.” She gives him a very small, almost embarrassed smile. For the briefest of moments it looks like the idea of having an assistant is entirely foreign to her. “I can take my mail. Myself.” 

She smiles again. It is genuine, and a little self-deprecating, and there is no condescension in it. As far as he can tell.

Then she nods and sits back down and picks up her receiver.

He is dismissed.

  
  
  


When he gets back down to the mail room, he pulls up the company’s organizational chart, and looks up Emma Swan. Because she’s new, and he just needs her information to do his job right. No other reason.

  
  
  
  
  


Three days later, he goes back on the late shift. There are a lot of legal documents requiring actual signatures, and those usually get done at the end of the day. He and a friendly, but reserved man named Robin split the nights between them, always two weeks each. 

He likes it, it’s quiet.

And he’s not required to stay the full 8 hours, just until he is done prepping courier and special mail to ship first thing in the morning. 

It’s peaceful.

  
  
  
  


Her light is still on. It’s nearly 10pm and her light is still on.

He’s not surprised. But he does feel a stab of empathy. Of concern.

He pushes his cart to her open door and knocks on the frame again. This time she grins. But god, she looks so tired. 

“What are you doing here? Surely it’s too late to bring me mail?” Even her voice sounds exhausted.

“Late shift,” he says. “Just making the rounds.” 

Her desk is a mess of files and folders and empty coffee cups. Her laptop is buried.

“What are you doing here so late?”

She smirks. “No rest for the wicked.”

He looks at her and she sighs. “It’s just that I----” She stops herself abruptly and her eyes narrow. “It’s nothing.”

He shakes his head. “You realize I’m not here to spy for the CEO, right? I’m just the mailroom guy?”

She smiles again, but it’s strained. 

“It’s nothing,” she repeats and goes back to the files on her desk. 

The conversation is over.

  
  
  


He brings her coffee the next night, and the night after that, and the night after that.

The first time she only takes it because he tells her it’s a replacement for the one he made her spill. The second night she only takes it because he says it’s left over, because his colleague is sick. (There is no colleague, not this late. But she doesn’t know that.) The third night she looks at him with narrowed eyes and outright suspicion, and dares him to make up another excuse.

He can’t think of a single thing. Just stands there, flustered, trying not to blush and failing.

And then - to his great surprise - she laughs out loud and takes the proffered cup. Looking just as surprised by her own actions as he is.

  
  


He doesn’t ask her to talk.

But he does tell her to go home, every time.   
And every time she smiles, and shakes her head, and tells him she will leave, soon. She never does.

The mailroom happens to be right next to the garage exit. Some nights her car doesn’t leave until almost two in the morning.

That’s the end of  _ his _ shift.

His  _ late _ shift.

  
  


He tells Robin he can stay on nights, and Robin is grateful. He has a new girlfriend, the kind who likes getting taken out in the evenings.

And Killian has the feeling someone has to keep an eye on Emma. He’s not sure anyone but him does.

  
  
  


And then one night three weeks later, she gets up from behind her desk to take the coffee he brings, and sways. 

“Emma?”

She is holding the edge of her desk in a white-knuckle grip and breathes slowly, with great effort, her eyes firmly closed.

He walks over to her and very gently pries her hands loose and then leads her to the couch. 

“Sit.” He says it quietly, but with conviction.

She complies.

He waits, without speaking, for her breathing to even out, and finally she opens her eyes.

“Thank you.” She smiles. “I’m fine now.”

And that is the last straw.

“Stop,” he says. “Please - stop. Tell me what’s going on. You are not fine.”

She doesn’t move for a long time. Just sits there, looking more tired and more run-down than anyone he has seen in a long time.

“I thought I wanted this.” Her voice is a whisper.

He raises an eyebrow in question and she rolls her eyes. “The career, you know. The title and the office and the assigned parking space.”

He doesn’t say anything, because he doesn’t have to. She just looks at him and then nods.

“Yeah,” she says softly. “I’m not sure it’s for me, either. Turns out I don’t like corporate law nearly as much as I thought I would.”

He laughs out loud.

When she looks at him with narrowed eyes, he grins back. “You’re not a corporate lawyer. Anyone with eyes could tell you that.”

“And how would you know?”

He nods at her, still grinning. “I’m a corporate lawyer.” 

Her jaw drops. Literally.

He pats her arm. “I used to have an office just like this. And then a bigger one. A few floors above it. And then one on a corner. A lot more floors above that.”

She shakes her head, blinking. He waits. This moment isn’t about him. It’s about her assimilating a flood of new information, and he knows she’ll talk when she’s ready.

And she does. “What happened?” Her voice is a whisper.

He takes her hand. It’s colder than it should be. Her circulation is not working right, and it sends a spike of fear and concern through him, because that is a sign. And not a good one.

“I did what you do,” he says, gently rubbing warmth back into her fingers. “Worked long hours. Spent my days and nights and weekends chasing down the rabbit hole of what I thought I wanted.”

“And then?” She is riveted. Looks at him, eyes wide, unblinking.

“Had a breakdown that ended my career. Not with a bang. With a whimper.” He can feel her hand squeeze his. “Came to the US because my brother lives here. He married an American, you see.”

Her eyes are still locked in his. “And you--- you work in a mailroom? Of a law firm?”

He knows it’s ridiculous. But he also knows he needs it. “I like to remind myself of what I do not miss.”

She laughs out loud at that.

It’s a beautiful sound. He wants to hear it again. Often.

Instead he smiles at her. “Case in point: Do you even know that it’s Christmas Eve, love?”

“ _ What? _ ” She looks truly aghast. “It can’t be.”

He looks at her, at the severe pantsuit and the expensive silk blouse and the disheveled hair, put up in something resembling a knot, held together by a ball-point pen. Pictures her in jeans and a sweater and thinks how much this entire corporate get-up does  _ not _ suit her.

Then he takes her other hand. “It’s past midnight. That means it’s Christmas Eve.”

She shakes her head.

“There’s a diner down the street.” He gets up and pulls her with him. “We’re going to go and have some food before you pass out, and then we are going to have a small talk about your life choices.”

She pulls her hands from his grasp.

“Emma.” He waits until she looks at him. “I am not here to tell you how you live your life, love. I am not going to question any decision you make, or have ever made, not one.” She’s still looking at him, and he takes it as a good sign. “I just--- I want to help you.”

She is silent for a long time. Seconds tick by, become minutes.

She doesn’t move and doesn’t speak.

He holds her gaze. Does not look away.

“Why?” She finally asks.

He smiles. Takes her hand again, and this time she does not pull away. “Because it’s not too late for you.”

She bites her lip and then squeezes his fingers. 

“Something tells me it’s not too late for you either,” she says softly. “Something tells me that there might be a whole part of your life that has yet to begin.”

And he cannot help hoping that she is right.

.

.

.

  
  


They have Chinese food and end up laughing more than eating.

He takes her to his brother’s house for Christmas Day dinner, against her protests.

They open a two-person firm for small business law, helping startups get up and running, for reasonable fees. They sort their own mail.

And they go back to the Chinese restaurant every year on Christmas Eve, even when Emma is so pregnant she can hardly move, even when their children are in the terrible twos, or being potty-trained, or starting to Be Teenagers.

More than twenty years later, with each of their kids spending Christmas Eve at their respective partner’s homes, Emma leans against her husband in the restaurant booth and looks up at his profile.

He looks pensive and yet content, and she kisses the underside of his jaw. 

“Did you ever think we’d end up here?” It’s an honest question. One she asks him every year.

And he answers the same way he always does. “Not in my wildest dreams. But they do say Christmas is the time reserved for miracles.”

And then he kisses her, soft and slow and exactly the same way he kissed her the first time they came here, back when she was not yet a whole person, and neither was he.

They are now.

  
  



End file.
